Blackout
by The Re-Writers
Summary: When Hermione wakes up, it takes her a few seconds to remember where she is. She shifts onto her side and her breasts are pressed up against Draco’s naked back. DMHG
1. Prologue

**Blackout**  
Prologue

* * *

Hermione isn't an idiot. She knows Ron is stalling breaking up with her when he doesn't see her for the rest of the weekend, and then on Monday, he doesn't meet her before Potions. 

When lunch rolls around, she scopes out the table inds him sitting with Harry, like usual. She walks up to them in the middle of a heated argument over Quidditch, and stands there, waiting for one of them to notice her. Finally she clears her throat and Ron bothers to stop his stupid gushing and acknowledge her existence.

"Hermione." He doesn't look pleased to see her, and he gives Harry this weird look before he stands. "Hi."

"Hi," she says. She reaches up to kiss him on the lips, but he turns his face and she winds up pecking his cheek. It's awkward.

Ron clears his throat and drops his voice. "Can we, uh-- can we talk?"

And he doesn't even wait for her to answer before he grabs her elbow and steers her all of ten feet away from Harry, who is doing that thing where he pretends not to be eavesdropping but obviously is.

"I think-- I think this isn't really working. With us." He pauses, purses his lips and blows out this long-suffering sigh, like this is just so hard on him. "We're not really heading in the same direction. I like you, I do, but-- we want different things. Do you get what I'm saying?"

He's speaking slowly, looking at her like he doesn't think she's capable of comprehending what he's saying.

"Just save it, Ronald, okay?" she scoffs, and sweeps past him.

She sits down a few seats away and takes a few bites of her meal. That's long enough to make it look like what just happened was not really upsetting, which it sort of was, so when she leaves, it's a nonchalant exit, not like she's trying to get away as quickly as possible or something.

She keeps her chin high as she walks out, but she's not paying attention and knocks shoulders with some pimply-faced first year and almost knocks her books.

"Excuse me," she snaps, and pushes out through the doors into the sunny afternoon.

Once she's outside, she cracks, just a little. She doesn't cry or anything, but her stomach is tied in knots and queasy, and she is breathing harder than she should be. Getting dumped sucks, even if it's by someone you didn't even really like that much and you saw it coming a million miles away.

And she really didn't like Ron, that much. Yeah, he's cute, but only in a generic way, if you think about it, and he was more interested in hanging out with her Harry all the time instead of, say, giving her orgasms.

She's better off, for sure.

Hermione leans up against the wall and focuses on arranging her body position so she looks casual, indifferent. No way in hell is she going back inside; and she can't even hide out with Ginny, since she didn't even show up today, surprise surprise, is probably out having sex with her boyfriend.

Not that Hermione has an issue with the sex in theory, but she could really use her best friend right about now.

Not that she's thought of Ginny as her best friend in awhile, truth be told.

"What's wrong with you, Granger?"

Hermione jumps, startled. Whips around to see Malfoy, standing there and smirking at her in his usual Draco way.

She glares at him. "What do you want?"

"I just saw you. Leave, I mean," he says, haltingly. "You looked sick."

Dammit. She was not supposed to look upset. She was supposed to look like she didn't care, at all. Which she doesn't. Mostly.

Hermione frowns. "I'm not, okay? I'm--"

She stops. She's not supposed to be telling him this at all. It's Malfoy and especially when she is upset. Not over Ron, just--over everything. Everything.

"Your day must have been sucking pretty hard." She looks over at him with raised eyebrows. "You don't skip class, like, ever."

"Not the best day ever, no," he responds, "Not that it's any of _your_ business."

"What, trouble in paradise?"

Draco winces perceptibly.

"She's not…" He trails off and shrugs. "We're not."

Hmm. There's an interesting development.

Hermione starts for the common room and reaches into her book bag. She waves before she reaches the door, because she sees Harry and Ron heading in her direction.

They're deep in conversation as they walk, heads bent close together, Harry's armful of books waving around wildly to emphasize some point of his, Ron's hair flopping as he shakes his head in disagreement. Finally, Harry happens to glance up and sees her standing outside of Gryffindor Tower. He stops in his tracks and stares.

"Hermione?" He blinks.

"Harry," she says coolly.

She says the password quickly and then lets her gaze flick up and down over Ron.

He looks sheepish, and confused, and like the idiot he is. Seriously, he is an idiot. Who does he think he is, dumping her? Hermione knows that she is hot, and smart, and awesome, and he was lucky that she even bothered to date his lame ass in the first place. What a moron. But what did she expect? He's a guy, so that's not the shocker of the century or anything.

Without waiting for a response, Hermione squares her shoulders, shifts her bag onto her shoulder and saunters straight past them. It takes pretty much all of her personal restraint not to look over her shoulder.

That doesn't, however, stop her from grinning ear-to-ear the whole way up to her dorm room. Score one, Hermione Granger.

* * *


	2. Chapter 1: Where Is My Mind?

**Blackout**

_Chapter One: Where Is My Mind?_

When Hermione gets to her Head Girl room, the first thing she does is check the bulletin board that she shares with Draco; there's a message from the school noting both their unexcused absences, which she promptly throws away. Draco comes in long enough to reminds her that dinner is at six, and insinuate that her hair is a mess, all in the same breath, but Hermione is too pleased with herself for pulling a mind-fuck on Ron and Harry to even pay attention.

Hermione doesn't know why she still sits with Ginny anymore, but it's a tradition that she cares about keeping. The only one she cares about, really.

"So," says Ginny. "How was your day, Hermione?" Hermione wonders if she already knows about the breakup.

"Oh, you know." She lifts one shoulder in a shrug and chews a forkful of green beans. "Fine."

"And things with Ron? How are they?"

Crap.

"Um, we broke up, actually," she says, staring down at her plate.

When she glances up across the table, Lavendar is smirking at her. Classless bitch. She would glare back if McGonagell wasn't staring at her.

"You broke up?" Ginny echoes.

"Such a shame," Lavendar coos, not looking like she thinks it's a shame at all. "Finally you were dating a boy of some stature."

That girl wouldn't know stature if it bit her on the ass.

Lavendar excuses herself early to go pill-pop herself into a Xanax-induced coma, and then Hermione excuses herself to go upstairs. She does half of her Potions homework while she watches the Gryffindor team practice Quidditch, where Ron is making a fool out of himself. He's trying to do a trick on his broom; it's actually totally embarrassing, and yet, Hermione can't bring herself to look away. It's like a trainwreck.

Eventually she tries to find Ginny, but she's not in her room, and Hermione doesn't bother to leave a message with her roommates. She's probably passed out drunk somewhere. Which is a horrible thing to think about your best friend, even if your best friend has been AWOL when you really need her around, but she doesn't feel bad for thinking that.

School the next day goes fine. Hermione just pretends nothing is wrong, and wears a kickass outfit, and makes sure that at lunch in the lounge, Ron sees her when she walks by so that he's acutely aware of exactly what he's missing out on.

At least she has Ginny to sit with. Even if she looks way hungover and like she didn't even take a shower this morning. Her lipstick is way too dark, and kind of smeared, and her skirt is all wrinkled and slept-on. She also smells like she's already started drinking—or hasn't stopped since last night.

"Mmm," hums Hermione to whatever Ginny is saying, but she's zoning out, looking over Ginny's shoulder at where Ron, Harry and Dean are all sitting together.

She doesn't want to admit it, but she's almost a little hurt that Harry is still all buddy-buddy with Ron. Isn't he supposed to be the one who worships at her feet? Which was flattering, sometimes, though mostly annoying these days, but shouldn't he be offended on her behalf? Tell Ron to shove off? Hex him out in the middle of the lounge in front of everyone?

Wait, no. Draco is the one who does the hexing.

And speaking of Draco-- he keeps looking up and catching her eye for a few seconds, and then drinking his coffee, and pretending to read a newspaper but looking up at her again instead.

"Helloooo, earth to Hermione?" Ginny snaps her fingers in front of Hermione's face, and Hermione frowns. "Are you even listening to me?"

She fakes her way through the conversation, only half-listening as Ginny goes on and on about Dean, and Dean's friends, and how Dean is a great kisser, and can you believe someone as awesome as Dean actually exists? When they're done eating, she walks out of the lounge, shoulder-to-shoulder with Ginny. Draco is staring at her. And what is that about?

A house elf has left a plate of orange slices waiting for her in the head girl's room when she gets back, along with a pitcher of fresh lemonade. Hermione goes upstairs and changes into jeans, then takes the plate and the pitcher to the common room and sets them on the coffee table.

She closes her eyes, and can feel herself beginning to fall asleep, when she wakes up, grasps the edge of the chair and blinks, she looks up and sees Draco standing there.

"Merlin," she sputters, and glares.

He squints down at her. "I never get anything like that from the house elves."

"Well, thanks for scaring the crap out of me."

"You're welcome," he deadpans, watching as she ruffles out her hair.

"Don't be an idiot," she tells him.

They're just kind of looking at each other, him doing his smirking thing, and it's a little awkward. It's not like they have anything to discuss concerning their duties, really. What the hell is he even doing here? Normally he's in Parkinson's room all night.

"What the hell are you even doing here?" she asks.

"You left this outside," he explains, brandishing her journal.

Hermione had noticed they it was missing but hadn't thought much about it--until now.

"Oh," she says. "Thanks." She wondered if he had read it. Probably.

"There's lemonade on the table," she offers, sarcastically.

He looks over at it, and then back at her. "I'm fine, those bloody house elves must've poisoned it anyway."

"And orange slices, too." She adds.

He pulls out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a lighter and lights up, right there in their common room. Hermione's about to remind him that smoking leads to things like lung cancer, and bad complexions and yellow teeth, not that she would want to slow down his death or anything, but then Draco exhales and she's distracted by his mouth.

"You're smoking?" she notes with an eyebrow raise. Ass.

"Don't tell," he replies. He kind of leans his body toward her and waggles his eyebrows as he says it, and, again, it's pretty weird. There's a small tingle in her gut and Draco is _joking_ with her and it's as if he's sharing a secret or something. What the hell?

He taps ash from the lit cigarette and she glares at him.

She narrows her eyes at him dangerously. "Put that out now or die."

Draco makes a show of bending down and grinding the butt against the marble floors, then picks it up, waves it around for her to see and puts it in his pocket.

Hermione rolls her eyes and takes a deep breath before closing her again; she lets herself slowly fall back asleep. When she opens her eyes, looking for Malfoy, he's already gone. Her journal is sitting on the table, and two of the orange slices have been taken off the plate.

That night she falls asleep on her stomach, on top of her covers, while trying to write an essay.

Hermione dreams about Draco—it's all skin against skin, nails and teeth scraping against all the right places, kisses that melt into each other, and he's deep inside her and they're fucking, and it's more than just enjoyable, it's intense, he fills up spaces she didn't know were even there, it leaves her breathless and begging and on the edge of hysteria. She wakes up at three in the morning, panting, both her cheeks and the space between her legs wet.

On the walk to class, Hermione thinks a lot about Draco. And sex with Draco.

He would know how to do it right. No clumsy undressing, with skirts and underwear caught awkwardly around her ankles, struggling to tug her shirt over her head. He'd probably be rough where she wanted him to be, like, pin her up against a wall because he could actually hold her there easily, and yank her head around by her hair, and pinch her nipples, and make her scream for real, not like the low little breathy half-moans she used to make with Ron, which were usually just for show anyway.

And he'd be considerate, too, like, not just use her cunt as a deposit box but actually care about getting her off in return, no matter how long it might take.

Draco probably gives great head.

Before she knows it, her face is all flushed and warm and her heart is beating a little too fast. Merlin. When did she become Queen Nympho of Nymphonia?

Even if she wanted to. He probably wouldn't anyway.

And it's not like Hermione does. Want to. She's just sex-deprived, and a little lonely, and a lot horny. That's it. It's probably misdirected lust. Obviously she's annoyed about Harry, or maybe missing Ron and wants to hurt him subconsciously or something by fantasizing about his enemy. Except that's not it at all, because she hasn't really thought about Ron a lot lately, and she's not even really mad at him. More, like, just resigned.

Which doesn't explain the dreaming about Draco.

She has to stop thinking about this.


	3. Chapter 2: I Want You

**Blackout**

_**Chapter Two: I Want You**_

Ginny is gone all day, again, and Ron doesn't look in her direction at all when she breezes through the court yard past him and Harry, and she only sees Malfoy, once, when she's running to Potions to avoid her second tardy this month. He's talking to Pansy.

By the time her last class lets out, she's grouchy as all hell. Two people owl her while she's studying; the first one is Ginny, and the second is from Harry's owl. She ignores them both for as long as she can stand it.

But then a sudden idea pops into her head, what if she just owls Malfoy? What if doing that would get her over all the emotional bullshit?

Draco Malfoy was always labeled as Malfoy for a long time, but then she started to feel a little bad about that, or maybe she just started to see him as something else, and in her mind, she switched it to just his name. Draco.

She began to write, feeling a bit crazy and out of character, but she decided she liked this new rush. It was exciting, not like Ron, who nearly bored her to tears with all his talk about Qudditch.

She's wasn't sure how long to wait until he owled back. The usual boy rules didn't apply to Draco for several reasons. One, because Draco Malfoy did not act like normal boys, who took about two seconds to figure out because they were all dumb and easy, and Draco is-- complicated. And two, because they're not even close to being friends. So, maybe. Maybe she could owl him back that night and it wouldn't seem like she was desperate or eager or anything.

Whatever. Draco can think whatever he wants, it's not like he matters.

He enters her room, slightly out of breath. "Hello?"

"Hi," she says, flat on her back on her bed.

"So I got your message."

"Oh yeah?" She sounds slightly flirtacious, unlike herself. "Anyway, I think we should patrol the halls tonight."

"Really?" he asks, and he smirks as he says it, and Hermione's toes curl.

The following night they decide to patrol outside by the Quidditch pitch.

For awhile they walk along and don't speak. He lights a cigarette, and after watching as he inhales a few puffs, she puts her hand over his and steals it from him. She gazes at him closely as she takes a long drag.

"You broke up with Pansy because she cheated on you, didn't you," she blurts out.

She's not really sure why she's bringing this up. It's not like she deserves an explanation from him, or even really particularly wants one. He cuts his eyes toward her and his jaw tenses and for a second, she thinks he's going to punch her in the face, or yell at her, or something.

But then he breathes out. He doesn't look angry--just, sad, or wistful, or some other adjective she can't quite think of offhand.

"Pansy…" he starts, and then stops, and then starts again. "I like her." He shrugs.

"Oh," She smirks, she's figured him out. "You _like _her," she says, handing back the cigarette.

He ducks his head and flicks the butt onto the ground. "Yeah. I do."

Hermione thinks about Pansy, and how she seems convinced the world owes her some huge debt. Draco is the opposite, always trying to make things harder for people, even though they were never easy for him.

If she was him—well, she'd probably be hexing a lot more people, that was for sure.

Ron and Harry go to the Burrow for the weekend for some reason, and she is not invited. Hermione knows this because she makes it her business to know everything that's going on with everyone, and also, because she went to find them and they weren't there. So she is forced to spend the day alone, in her room, reading.

Hermione lounges on the sofa, and Draco comes out. He's wearing a tight white cotton shirt and boxers. When he sees her, his mouth quirks in a smirk and Hermione's stomach sommersaults.

"Morning," he says, sounding pleased.

"Up so early?" She asks sarcastically since it was already noon.

Draco looks mildly non-plussed by the question; considering that he's a master of the unaffected, she takes it as a small victory.

She sits up a little awkwardly and points to two stacks of paper on the coffee table, "We need to finish these detention slips."

Hermione likes the way he stands there in the middle and watches her. He sits down and leans over them, and their faces are closer than they've been, ever. She can't breathe. At all.

Suddenly the door slams open, and McGonagal comes out.

Draco hastily shifts away from her. Hermione looks up and smiles politely.

"Professor," she greets breathlessly. "Hey!"

"Hermione." She says as strict as ever. "Nice to see your both finishing those detention slips, how are they coming along?"

"You know us, always partaking in some arguement over the smallest of things," Hermione shoots back with a grin and an exaggerated wink.

McGonnagal gives a quick smile, obviously not pleased by this and walks out.

"Ha ha," says Draco dryly.

They spend the day in the common room, mostly-- Draco is doing Potions homework, and Hermione reads Witch Weekly. It's awkward and she doesn't feel like she has to come up with stuff to talk about, or that if she does, it has to be something he's interested in.

When she lifts up her head and peers at him, he's sneaking a look at her legs over his textbook, and she smiles into her magazine.

"Stop staring," She blurts out, narrowing her eyes at him.

"Sometimes a look is just a look," Draco reminds her, but he's giving her a look-look, not a normal look.

Hermione knows those looks.

Their shoulders are touching, even though the couch is huge and they don't need to be sitting so close, and she feels itchy and hot and if he touches her anymore, she's going to explode.

"I should go to sleep," she finally says, without much conviction. "I'll—"

"You can stay," he cuts in. His voice is a little gravelly, and he's staring right at her, but it's like it's hard for him to keep himself from looking away. "I mean. You can just sleep out here if you want."

Oh, she wants.

"Here," Heremione answers softly.

He nods and starts to get up, but she holds onto his arm, tugs him down.

"You, too," she whispers, her lips brushing his ear, and he turns his head.

"Me?" Draco's breath is hot against her cheek.

"You."


	4. Chapter 3: Lover I Don't Have to Love

**Author's Note: This is just the sex chapter, the first of hopefully many. Don't worry, the next chapter is really long.**

**Blackout: Chapter Three**

_What I'm Looking For_

Hermione feels suddenly brave, like all in a quick gust, and she tilts her head up and kisses him. His mouth is firm and dry. He closes his eyes when she presses her lips to his; she knows because she keeps hers open and watches him carefully the whole time.

When she draws back, she holds her breath until he opens her eyes and looks at her. She's painfully terrified that he's going to turn her down, remind her that she's Hermione, and that she's a mudblood, tell her they can't do this, and make it all horrible and like she should feel guilty and stupid and--

She sees him open his eyes, look at her frazzled expressions and slowly smirk.

At that, she can't help but smile back, and he kisses her again, long and open-mouthed. They climb off the couch and stumble to his bedroom door, past the papers and the furniture, just touching and kissing and trying not to laugh to think about what they were doing.

She falls back onto his bed, with him on top of her, both of them on top of the silky comforter, as Draco turns and yanks off his shirt in one fluid movement. Looks at her and gives her a knowing smirk when she begins to unbutton the top of her blouse.

He kisses her again and lightly tiptoes his fingers down her stomach. But he stops at the waistband of her skirt, and drops to the side, and she lets her face fall into the crook of his neck, closes her eyes, falls asleep feeling warm. But her mind is sick with the thought, wondering why he stopped.

When Hermione wakes up, it takes her a few seconds to remember where she is. The whole room is sun-filled from the light flooding in through the half-open blinds, and the sheets feel different against her skin, which is stretched tight across her bones and too hot. She shifts onto her side and her breasts press up against Draco's naked back.

He lets out a low moan; she can't tell if he's awake or dreaming, so she reaches up and licks the pale nape of his neck, grazes her teeth against it. The skin there is salty from dried sweat. One of his arms stretches out and his hand slides down the length of her thigh. She shivers.

"Kiss me," she murmurs, but her voice sounds hoarse and needy in her own ears. She was going more for commanding. She wants him inside, just wants to look at him, her arms and legs are like Jello.

Draco turns, rolls her so she's straddling on top of him, his hands steady on her hipbones. He leans up and closes the gap between them, reaches one hand up, fingers snaring in the back of her tangled hair. She bites down on the lush of his lower lip.

Hermione puts her hands flat on his bare chest. His lightly defined muscles are there, and he's kind of glistening with a light sheen of sweat, but it's not gross sweaty. It's hot. She settles herself down on him and can feel that he's hard, and suddenly that makes her feel so much better about all of this, about herself. He makes this sound in his throat when she digs her nails into his shoulders, and she likes that, likes that she does that to him.

"I want you to fuck me," she tells him, boldly. She's never talked like that out loud, to anyone, and it feels kind of weird to say, but at the same time, she's feeling a little giddy. "Here. And against the wall." She stops and thinks for a moment. "Maybe on the floor, too."

His head is tilted to the side and he's smirking and just looking at her, and then kissing her, again, and she knows neither of them has brush their teeth yet which would normally be disgusting, but he tastes just like cigarettes so it's not so bad.

"I want--" she says between kisses, "I want--"

But his hand is snaking inside of her bottoms, now, fingers rubbing her clit, so she can't really talk, and she half-heartedly pushes him off so she can finish, and pinches his side. He must be ticklish there because his ribs shift under her fingers as he grunts out a type of laugh. This is not really what she expected of him in bed. She expected him to be, like, hard and angry, rough, or sad, or something. Not all laughing and teasing kisses and foreplay.

There are a million reasons to not be doing this. At the top of the list, Ron, and also Ginny, and would-be girlfriend Pansy, and the fact that he's Draco Malfoy, and she's Hermione Granger, and--and this is a bad idea, this won't end well, probably, or even be worth it, but he's pulling her down into another kiss, breathing into her mouth, and she closes her eyes and thinks that it might. It might.


	5. Chapter 4: Friends, Lovers, & Others

**Blackout**

_**Chapter Four: Friends, Lovers, and Others**_

Hermione knows that she's still friends with Ginny when she goes to the bathroom after lunch and sees the words GINNY WEASLEY IS A SKANK scrawled on the stall door in blue pen, and then ONLY ON THE WEEKENDS underneath it in red, in someone else's handwriting. Anger boils up in her gut, crawls under her skin.

She crosses out the insults with a blot of ink, and then writes scratches the words with her quill underneath them, You write anything else about GW, and I will track you down and get you expelled. Don't even try me. –HG. And then, as an afterthought, adds: P.S., I'm really not kidding.

Maybe Ginny has been failing at best friend duties lately, but that doesn't mean that Hermione is going to let anyone trash her.

Guilt kind of nags at her for the rest of the day. Sure, Ginny isn't even around at meals or classes enough lately to notice what a joke she's become around Hogwarts, but even if she's all crazy now, Hermione did sleep with her family's mortal enemy and isn't planning on telling her anytime soon, so maybe some sign of loyalty is deserved. Otherwise she's just a backstabbing slut with no respect for the rules of friendship.

Hermione scrawls a note on a scratch piece of paper to owl Ginny after her last class, and says, "Gin, hey, it's me, listen, I know it's been awhile, so we should hang, talk, whatever you need, come find me," and when she sends away the note, she looks up and sees Draco. And Pansy, too, the two of them, standing next to the password protected entrace to the head boy and girl's rooms.

It's been two days since they had sex in his room, and they haven't talked since. Hermione spent Sunday at the library, reading two spellbooks, finishing all of her homework, even some not due yet, and not thinking about Draco, and then Monday there was school and putting up with snarky comments from Lavendar and not thinking about Draco.

And now here he is, leaning against the wall, right in front of her, so she can't not think about him. He's talking to Pansy; it looks serious. Pansy tucks her raven hair behind her ears and pouts prettily and touches Draco's elbow, and--oh. Okay, then. Hermione sees how it is.

Suddenly she doesn't really want to look anymore.

Hermione flops back on her bed and wonders when she started surrounding herself with people who are either assholes, or addicts, or both.

Ten o'clock rolls around and she's restless and annoyed and obsessing about Draco, again. What does he see in Pansy, of all people? She's so… plain. Maybe he's one of those guys who likes plain. Maybe it's like how the protagonist always has the fatal flaw, and that's his--he falls in love too easily, and always with the wrong person. But wouldn't that make _her _the right girl for him then?

Hermione's never been in love. Definitely not with Ron, ugh. For awhile she thought she was with Harry. She did love him. She still loves him, even, but it's not really romantic or anything or even if their friends anymore--it's like how she loves Ginny, kind of, how someone can be in your life and be too annoying to live with sometimes but you love them anyway, even if it doesn't make sense.

As far as she can tell, love makes you crazy and constantly miserable, and if that's how it is, she'll pass, thank you.

The only people she knows that are in love and actually happy about it are Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. But she's pretty sure that they're a freak of nature, and that it usually only works out in the movies, and hardly ever with anyone in the real world. Her life is not at all like a movie; Ginny's, on the other hand, is like ultra cinematic. Hermione figures this means she'll either get the big happily ever after, or die tragically at the prime of life.

She's itching for some kind of a distraction-- it's been awhile since she's done any exercise, so she gets on the floor and does the a stretch, concentrating on her breathing techniques, and then shifts onto her stomach, and then reaches behind to grab her ankles and pull herself into the bow. But it doesn't work; now she's just thinking the same thoughts in some uncomfortable pose on the floor.

Hermione has to get out of her room, out of Hogwarts, so she puts on favorite jeans and her new jacket and goes into the common room. She figures Draco is already in bed for the night, knocked into an early coma.

Hermione does not care, though, and with a quick glance in the mirror to doublecheck that her lipstick isn't on her teeth, she gets out, squares her shoulders and marches straight to Draco's room.

She throws open the door dramatically, since she knows the importance of making an impressive entrance, and makes sure to bolt it shut behind her. He never locks it, which seems stupid of him since he is the one always complaining about wanting his privacy.

There's music playing and Draco is lying on his bed. He's flat on his stomach, his arms folded underneath his eyes. He doesn't look up even after she's been standing there for about fifteen seconds.

"Don't ignore me," she snaps, "don't pull that hot-and-cold shit on me. Don't even."

"I wasn't ignoring you," he says into the comforter, muffled.

"You're ignoring me, or you're brooding, or both," she retorts. "Whatever. Either way, it's dumb. I hate it. So stop." She pauses. "Also, you shouldn't lie like that."

He peeks up at her, finally. "And why is that?" His voice entails that he is mocking her.

"Sleeping on your stomach is bad for your back. It crushes your organs or something. I don't know, do I look like a doctor?"

She walks over, and sits down next to him.

Slowly he pulls himself into a sitting position and looks over at her. "You're the one ignoring me, you know."

"Hello, I came over here, didn't I?" She shrugs off her jacket and kicks off her shoes. "What is your damage? Is this about Pansy? I saw you guys. What, are you two like an item again?"

"Pansy is seeing a guy," he explains, and then adds, "He's a Hufflepuff."

"A Hufflepuff? Merlin."

Draco smiles wryly. "She wanted to talk to me, about it. To make sure I didn't have a problem. And to let me know that he's extremely funny and nice, and doesn't have… baggage."

"That just means he's boring," she informs him. "Anyone worth knowing has baggage."

"Even you?" he asks with raised eyebrows.

"Please. I am perfect."

She moves closer to him, crawls into his lap, puts her arms around his neck, feeling like rejection is only a step away. His hair is soft, and longer than she'd realized.

"Granger," he says, almost warningly, his hands coming up to her waist.

"Draco," she replies evenly, and bends her head down so her hair falls across her face like a curtain. "What, did you think I seriously came over so we could share our feelings and braid each other's hair? Because, uh, no. I'm not that kind of girl."

"We can't anymore," he reminds her.

"Who cares?"

He must agree with her on that because when she kisses him, he doesn't push her away.

"I locked the door," she says against his mouth, sotto-voice, and drags her top off, over her head, lets it fall to the side. "No one saw me come in."

She's sitting in his lap in nothing but a bra, which he takes a few moments to look over her appreciatively. Good. It's damn time someone appreciated her the way she deserves.

There's not a lot of foreplay, this time around. For all of his initial reluctance, he's quick to wriggle her out of her skirt, spread her out underneath him. She's already soaked through her underwear. It's ridiculous. He hikes her legs way up, winds them above his rib cage, and she's suddenly very, very grateful for her silly yoga-as-a-substitute-for-no sports or Quidditch.

Her hips tilt up and she's clenching her thighs around him tightly; he pushes into her again and again, leaves her scrabbling at his shoulders, trying to crush him closer. Her nerves are on fire, and her orgasm pulls her apart, hits her fast and furious. She has to bite into his shoulder to keep herself from crying out.

It leaves her shaking and exhausted, slick with sweat and sex, and she can't believe she just came from penetration only. That's never happened before. Ron could only ever get her off with his mouth or his fingers, and even then it wasn't always a sure thing. And it was definitely never like this.

Draco keeps holding her when they've come down, is giving little licks and bites in her neck and the hollow of her collarbone, until finally she pushes him to the side so she can catch her breath.

"Okay?" he asks.

"Mmmph," she nods, and licks at his mouth, sucks in his lower lip and bites down. She has better uses for his mouth than talking.

He untangles himself from the sheets and steps into his jeans. His belt is low and loose, boxers poking out over the waistband, and he digs a pack of cigarettes out of his dresser drawer, flips one of them into his mouth. That is badass, and so hot. For some reason she had thought he would smoke Newports, or Marlboro Reds. But instead he has a pack of Camels. Merlin knows where he got them from.

Hermione props her elbow up on the pillow, sets her chin in her hand and studies him, his muscled hips and the flat stretch from his navel, still exposed until he yanks on a a shirt.

"You look like Brad Pitt," she says. Except prettier, she thinks.

"Thanks?" She realizes he has no idea who that is. He glances over at her and zips himself up. One hand runs briskly through his hair, and he hesitates. "Granger--"

"Don't say it," she cuts in, before he can complete that thought, because she's pretty sure she knows where this conversation is headed, and she'd rather steer clear of it entirely. "I'm not going to ask you to go steady or whatever, okay?"

The last thing she needs right now is a boyfriend. She likes Malfoy, actually, he's fine to be around, but boys are frustrating enough. The second you start dating them, not that they ever could, they basically become retarded. It's just a fact.

She'd rather this just stay what it is--sex. Two bodies, banging together on occasion. Emotions are too exhausting.

She's sitting at the table alone at lunch, looking over some notes, when Ginny plops down across from her.

"Hi, Hermione," Ginny says.

Her voice is light, but she's looking at Hermione weirdly, like she's ready to jump on the defensive at any second.

"Gin, hey," she replies, and sets down the papers.

Ginny's skin is oily, compared to its usual smooth, fairness. Also, her hair is matted and stringy-looking, neglected. It's actually kind of sad. And she's wearing way too much dark eyeliner-- what is this, the nineties? Did she miss the memo? Heroin chic is dead. Thank god.

"So I was thinking, and you're right, we should do something, together," Ginny's saying, picking at her salad without actually eating it. "Harry told me that Lavendar's having a _huge _party in the room of requirement this weekend. Maybe we could go to that, or hang on Saturday--"

Hermione freezes. "You talk to Harry?"

"Well, yeah, we have Quidditch practice together," Ginny shrugs. "Whatever. Not a big deal. Changing subject. Padma's gaining weight, don't you think?"

Ginny starts to talk more about how fat the twins are getting, and that somehow segues into how Dean is amazing, but then Dean is actually there. She waves to him, of course, mouths "I gotta go" to Hermione and wanders off with an apologetic wave.

She's about to go back to reading her notes when Draco painfully taps her on the shoulder.

"Granger," he says, "Mind coming with me to clear up some business concerning some first-years that have accidently hexed each other?"

Hermione looks down. Head business. That's fine too.

"Fine."

This is how Hermione ends up walking with him to find them. Of course that leads to them making out in a deserted corridor--she claws at his hair and kisses him until she's hot and flushed, and he runs his hands over her back, under her shirt. She really, really wants to just run straight over to their common, drag him inside and pin him down on the sofa for hours. They could totally get caught like this, but she doesn't care.

"I--I should--" He stops sucking on her neck and looks toward the the direction of Ravenclaw house. "Those kids--"

She sits back and sighs, still panting, frustrated. "Yeah, yeah, I know, we have to do this. Go on then."

"Hermione--"

"Go!" she shoos, swatting at his arm. He smirks and leans in to peck her quickly on the mouth before he leaves her there.

Hermione goes to the common room and thinks about him as she masturbates in the shower, and then again before she falls asleep, and comes both times.

The next morning, Hermione's in the mood for breakfast, and they're not served it in their room; Head boy and girl usually receive a tray, but Draco and her rarely ate it, so it had stopped being brought months ago. So Hermione swings by the Great Hall to pick some up. She's sitting in the deserted section of the Gryffindor table--when Ron taps her on the shoulder.

He's just kind of standing there with a dumb look on his face. His red hair is in his eyes, which are big and confused and staring at her all funny. How did she ever find that look to be endearing and charming and cute? Now it's just, really irritating, and maybe that is how she knows she is over him, for real.

"What do you want?" she huffs.

"Why, yes, Hermione, it's great to see you too, as a matter of fact, I've been doing great. Thanks for asking."

"I'm kind of busy," she tells him with a glare, "so do you have something to, like, say, or are you just trying to bug me?"

"Maybe it's not about you. Did you think about that, huh? Maybe I'm just pondering these various breakfast selections." Ron reaches out and takes bit of hashbrowns, then slurps down a glass of orange juice. "Fried, Scrambled, Over easy... It's a difficult decision, Hermione. It requires a lot of deliberation. We Weasleys are a fickle breed."

"Well, pick one and get out of my face."

"Feisty! Old school Hermione coming out. Okay. I like that."

"Are you done yet?" she sighs. "Some of us have plans."

Okay, that is a lie, but for all _Ronald _knows, her plans involve doing the Quidditch team. She goes to brush past him, but he steps in front of her so she ends up bumping into his chest, hard.

"Plans? What, like a date? Like boyfriend plans? You have a boyfriend?" Ron asks. His eyes are narrowed at her, suspicious.

"I have friends. Boys. Boys as friends."

Another lie. She used to have boys as friends; she used to have Harry, and Seamus and Neville, and now she barely has anyone at all-- only Ginny, kind of, and. And...Draco.

Oh, that is so many levels of pathetic, she cannot even.

"Ah, but I see more in your eyes," he says, cryptically.

She snatches the plate of food from him.

"You don't see much in my eyes, Ron," she snaps.

"Hey, what's with you?" He sounds confused. Like this is some game and she should be playing along, but she doesn't fucking feel like it.

"What's with you?" she retorts, and takes a sip of tea. "Why don't you go bother Harry. You two are all best pals now without me anyway. You know, you can't have everything, Ron."

Ron's mouth hangs open, but he doesn't say another word, and she swears that he blushes or something, but whatever, she's so over it, over everything, so she tosses her hair and turns on her heel and walks out through the tall doors.


	6. Chapter 5: Save Me

**Blackout**

Chapter 5

_**Save Me**_

Friday night comes, the party Ginny invited her to come, and Hermione goes to the room of requirement, and it's impossibly wrong. She should be reporting this, not joining it, with the boozed up jocks and the deafening music you can barely think over and threesomes in the bathroom. The alcohol is cheap and disgusting and served in red plastic cups, but she drinks it anyway and tries not to feel completely bored out of her mind.

By the time Hermione finds Ginny, Ginny's already gone through half a fifth of vodka; she's on the corner of one of the couches, perched on a boy that is _not _Dean's lap. She keeps laughing so hard that she loses her balance and falls onto the mysterious boy's thin shoulders. Then they start pawing at each other, and assaulting each other's mouths with tons of tongue and grinding together, right there in front of everyone, like Hermione's not standing half a foot away from them. And Hermione's kind of scandalized, which makes her feel stupid and twelve years old.

She tells Ginny she's going to find a bathroom--not that she's heard or anything--and then squeezes past some slutty fourth-year making it to second with a Slytherin sleaze on the staircase, hurries upstairs.

There's a line for the toilet, so she decides, whatever, this party is a bust, fuck it. But then she walks past one of the guestroom doors and hears a familiar voice. Harry's voice, muffled and indistinct. The door's cracked open, so she peers through it.

It's Ron, and Harry, sitting next to each other on the bed. Harry's hand is on Ron's neck. He's leaning against him, and Ron is leaning against the collar of Harry's shirt with one hand, and their foreheads so close they're almost touching. Ron is saying something, but she can't hear, grating hip-hop blasting from downstairs drowning them out--

But then Harry gets up, and Hermione's breath catches.

She turns fast, too fast, her shoulder knocks against the doorframe painfully, but she doesn't stop.

She stumbles blindly down the stairs again, all the way to the dance floor, by the roaring fireplace. She's totally stunned, like the time she found out Ron first liked her. Where everything was spinning and standing still at the same time. So stupid, she's so stupid, how did she not see this coming?

For a second she thinks she is going to puke right there. But that would be so gross, plus no way in hell is she going to risk ruining her shoes-- besides, the shock is already fading into fury, she's pissed, and she crumples the plastic cup in her hand and throws it aside angrily. God, fuck them. Fuck them.

"Hermione. Hermione Hermione Hermionehermionehermione."

Someone is suddenly grabbing at her shoulder, and she turns and it's Lavendar, her eyes bright and glassy. She grabs Hermione's hand, dissolves into high-pitched giggles, squeezes their interlaced fingers. Which is weird, since, um, they're not friends anymore, which must mean that Lavendar has been doing drugs with the rest of the dancers on the floor.

"You have to try," Lavendar gushes. "You. Have. To."

And why not, Hermione thinks. Her night can't get any fucking worse-- might as well.

Lavendar makes sure she gets hooked up; the guy with the tabs is probably in Slytherin, with greasy hair and a porn stache, standing outside of the circle of dancing partiers. He eyes her up and down with a leer and says, "You should probably take only one, little girl," but she takes two instead, steals Lavendar's plastic cup full of Bacardi to chase it down with.

It takes awhile to kick in. At first Lavendar stays with her, drags her into the circle, holds her hand up and dances with her to the music. But then they separate, and she disappears into the sweaty mass. Hermione's left surrounded by losers who are all dry humping each other to house music.

Some random guy comes up from behind, puts his hands on her. She tries to get into it, grinds back against him, leans into his touch, but his fingers are too clammy and his mouth is too wet on her neck. All she can think of is Draco, Draco's hands, Draco's lips, Draco, Draco, Dracodracodraco--

She spins away from him, keeps spinning, out of the throng, trips over her feet and tumbles onto the floor. Her ass hurts, but it feels good to stretch out there, the carpet pillowing her back, listening to the music and the ba-BUMP ba-BUMP of the blood roaring in her head over the unrelentent techno. All of it melting together into liquid sound.

Someone's tongue is in her ear, and that's seriously gross, but she barely even notices, it's like she's floating above herself. Weightless. A little like the feeling she used to get when she was doing something with Harry, except it's smoother, stronger. Thrumming in her veins. Her heart races.

It's pretty boring, actually, but she doesn't care about being bored, or the fact that this random guy is, like, molesting her neck, or about anything, at all.

And then the tongue isn't there anymore, and she turns her head and sees the guy getting up and leaving. Standing sentinel above him is Draco, shaking out his fist, the shadows from the strobe lights flickering over his face strangely.

She figures it's the drug, she's hallucinating, or something, but then he kneels down next to her and she knows he's really there. She wants to pull him down to her and press into him and feel him inside of her. She wants to touch him all over, everywhere, she's burning for it, she's burning. The shape of the crowd, they probably wouldn't even notice.

She presses her palm to his throat; she can feel his heartbeat through the thin skin, pounding hotly, echoing through her body, and she drifts her mouth loosely over his pulsepoint, up to his jaw. One of his hands curls around her wrist.

Without warning, he forcefully scoops her up and carries her back up to the door. Like she's a bride, or a damsel in distress in some fairytale, but that's not right.

"Hey. Hey! I'm not in a tower. I don't eat apples," she protests feebly into his neck. "You don't even have a horse, Malfoy. Put me down."

He does put her down, eventually, but instead of landing on sand, or grass, or even pavement, like she expected, she hits his bed with a soft oof.

"Shh," he reminds her, solemnly, pushes the hair off her face and smoothes a hand over her forehead like he's checking her for a fever.

There's this massive pressure on her chest, and suddenly she's crying, for no reason at all. It comes out of her in short, ragged bursts. She's aware enough to be embarrassed, but she can't stop, it just makes her sob harder, it doesn't even feel like she's crying. The drug is rolling over her in waves and she rides it, rides it, rides it.


	7. Chapter 6: Hide Another Mistake

**Blackout**

Chapter 6

_**Hide Another Mistake**_

Hermione's eyes open and she's facedown, sideways on a bed. Draco's bed. The springs creak as she gradually draws herself onto her knees. There's a pillow clutched tight in her arms, and she glances down at the floor and sees the comforter bunched up there in a pile. Early morning light streams in through the blinds.

Shit. She can't even swallow, her mouth is so dry. A glass of water is sitting on the nightstand, on top of a napkin, and her book bag and wand are propped up next to it. She drinks the water down all at once; it's lukewarm, but it still helps. It makes her head feel a little less foggy, at the very least.

Draco is on the floor on the other side of the bed, sleeping. She really doesn't want to wake him up and deal with everything, definitely not, but she feels bad about leaving without saying anything. She settles for digging out her lipliner and scratching out Thanks in flamme rose red on the damp-ringed napkin, then tucks it back under the edge of the empty glass.

Hermione gathers up her things and eases her sore feet into her skinny heels, teeters toward the door. It's really early, the sun's barely up, and she's dying for something more to drink.

Just as she opens Draco's door, she hears footsteps.

"Drake?"

Oh crap, oh crap, it's Blaise. For a second she flails, trying to decide if she should make a run for it, or else try to improvise some clever cover story. Normally she thinks she could pull off the latter, but then she remembers that Blaise is a Slytherin, and even worse, a really really good one.

He comes ambling in and finds her with her hand frozen on Draco's door, smeared makeup and sex hair, even though her and Draco didn't have sex. _This _night, at least. He's in a robe, a little scruffy and rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

"Pansy, is that you?" His head cocks to the side, eyebrows crinkling with confusion.

She sees it in his face as he takes her in-- signature messy hair, eyes circled in smudged mascara, the rumpled skirt, the hickey mark evident on her neck-- the dots are connecting, and it's like he sees right through her. It's like he knows.

Hermione panics. She abandons her post by the door and bolts.

"I-- I gotta go," she says breathlessly, and hears Blaise say her full name incredulously, but she rushes out the door, doesn't stop running until she's reached the girl's bathrooms, ducks into a stall and sits down with shaking hands.

She takes a shower, washes the sweat out of her hair, stays under so long her fingers turn pruny and gross. Her stomach is still cramped and her teeth still ache from all the crying she'd done the night before.

She shamefully walks back to her room, no sign of Draco or Blaise, fortunately, curls up under her thick covers and lets her mind wander.

She feels another crying jag coming on, but it dies somewhere in her throat and only makes her feel like she's going to throw up.

It's not like she gives a fuck if people think she's a whore or whatever, for the most part, but for some reason she can't stand the idea of the whole school knowing, even the faculty, most likely, standing there and giving her that look, that disapproving, disappointed look, even though she deserves it.

Everything in her life was so much easier when Draco was just the ferret and Ron was just her best friend, before Ginny went crazy, before Ron openly declared his love for her and she ignored her instincts and loved him back, back before when she didn't have to care about anyone's feelings except Harry and Ron's.

She wishes sex could just be sex, that she could be with Draco and not have things be so complicated, but they have to be, because he's Draco, and then there's Ron, too, you can't have one without the other-- and she loves them both and hates that there has to be a choice at all, and that no matter what people are going to get hurt. Fuck.

* * *

Ginny doesn't call Hermione to hang out like she said she would, and she doesn't come the next day to apologize. She doesn't do anything at all.

Hermione's not really that upset about it. Vaguely annoyed, maybe, but mostly she doesn't even care. She no longer has any friends and she doesn't even care, how fucked up is that?

* * *

So that leaves Draco--assuming he doesn't hate her now--for getting them caught. But then again, he never needed a reason to hate her before, back when she wasn't giving him free sex. And it's _his _best friend who came over at 5, freaking AM, not hers. It's up to him to keep this quiet. And if he does hate her now, fuck him, okay, it's not like she needed rescuing or whatever, she didn't even know he was at that party. And how did that even happen, anyway?

Whatever. If he's going to be a pratt, or act all stupid about it, she wants to know now so that she can tell him to fuck off properly.

When she lets herself into the his room, Draco isn't there, so she decides to wait. She puts turns on his stereo, music she's never heard before playing, then curls up in the middle of Draco's bed, on her side. The music is kind of melancholy, but not like slit-your-wrists Conor Oberst emo crap melancholy. It just makes her feel--tired. Like, in her bones.

"Granger, are you being neurotic?"

Draco is in the doorway, looking up at her from underneath his eyebrows, like he's amused.

"Shut up." Hermione pitches a pillow at him and watches it bounce harmlessly off of his chest. "I am not neurotic. I was just-- waiting."

Waiting, for a lot of things. For him. For her life to change. For things to start making some fucking sense.

God, this is what hanging out with Malfoy gets her: way too much maudlin introspection and morosity. Morosity? Moroseness? Whatever.

The mattress sinks with his weight as he sits down next to her, and she adjusts herself so her cheek is resting on his thigh. He brings one of his hands down and starts to pet her hair. It feels really good.

"I don't think I have friends anymore," she hears herself say. "Also, I think I turned Ron gay."

Draco raises his eyebrows. "You… turned him gay? He wasn't already gay, then you mean?"

"And Harry, too. Maybe."

"Ron… and Harry?" he asks, with disgust in his voice.

"I saw them." She bites her lower lip. "Together."

"Saw them--doing what, exactly? Not that _I _want to know, I just think everybody else would."

"They were--leaning, and stuff! I'm not an idiot. I know what's going on, okay?"

"You thought you saw me and Pansy, though. Before."

So he's got her there. She did run away before they actually did anything--maybe she's been too jumpy lately. Maybe she was imagining things, or just too drunk. Maybe--

Okay, so none of that is convincing her otherwise.

Ron and Harry. When she stops to think about it, it clears a lot of stuff up, weirdly. And maybe--maybe that means it's not her fault, why Ron stopped wanting her when he finally had her, why it was such a no-brainer Harry to choose Ron as a best friend over her, because he loved Ron more. Not just as a friend, but more than that, maybe he's like in love with Ron, for real.

Hermione pushes herself up off Draco's lap, looks him in the eye and says, "I'm not like Pansy, okay. I don't do drugs, and I don't have random sex,", and Draco laughs a little and says, "Believe me, I know," and she's kind of insulted, so she snaps, "Fuck you, Malfoy," and is about to storm off, but he catches her wrist and pulls her flush against him, kisses her soundly.

"I mean--" he sighs, and shakes his head. "Granger, from what I can see, you definitely do, do those things."

She studies him carefully to make sure it's worth it, and then says, "Fine, okay, whatever," and lets him kiss her again.

He buries his face into her stomach, and then between her thighs, works her with his mouth. She arches off the bed, pushing out her chest. She tries to focus on her breathing, where you empty out your lungs but keep your abdomen still the whole time, which is trickier than you'd think. Her knees give way after a while, so Draco holds her up as he licks her out. For a second she thinks she wonders what the hell she is doing, but then she's coming, coming, and she can't remember what the problem was in the first place.

* * *

**Author's Note**

* * *

**We have been posting chapters almost every day now, but it **_**is **_**hard work, and we would really appreciate feedback! We know this isn't your everyday Draco/Hermione fanfic, probably because Hermione has generally done all of the scamming on Draco instead of the other way around. But we do love reviews, they motivate us!**


	8. Chapter 7: Let The Bad Times Roll

**Blackout**

_Chapter 7_

_**Let the Bad Times Roll**_

* * *

Apparently Dumbledore thinks Draco is going to become a Death Eater, that's why he made Draco head boy--as a way to keep an eye on him. Draco tells Hermione this a few nights later at the Christmas that they have to host together in the Great Hall. He says it like it's a joke, but his voice is kind of rough around the edges, like it pisses him off in all truth.

Hermione thinks that if Dumbledore really feels that way, then he is an idiot. If Draco was like his father for real, would he be hanging around and going to school in Hogwarts? No. He would have stolen all of Dumbledore's secrets, killed Harry, and bailed in the middle of the night ages ago. Duh.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," he deadpans when she shares her take on the situation, and she smirks in return.

They can do this together--talk--because it is their duty tonight. It's nice to be able to talk to him in front of other people.

Draco cleans up nice--looks sharp in his suit, but not too sharp, pretty but not too pretty. He looks rich, but not extravagantly so. Pansy Parkinson, on the other hand, is dolled up in a short-cut signature emerald gown; everything about her is overdone, trying too hard. She screams new money. Hermione always thought Slytherin's colors never suited her dark hair anyways.

Ginny's around, somewhere--Hermione saw her briefly, but Ginny looked like she was sulking and was nursing a flask, and Hermione felt weary just looking at her, so it wasn't like she was going to go out of her way to approach her or anything. Oh, and Pansy is here with her Hufflepuff boyfriend, who is such a downgrade from Draco that it's seriously laughable. That girl is an idiot.

Harry and Ron are standing together in a corner, eating finger sandwiches and ignoring her. Which is fine, because every time she glances over at them, she thinks about Harry's hand on Ron's neck, and imagines them kissing, and her face heats up.

Plus, she has Draco for company, so she doesn't feel completely alone. She makes fun of everybody else's outfits, and he talks about the vaulted ceilings and how the decorating committee has absolutely no taste.

Hermione makes sure not to stand too close to him, but sometimes she gets kind of caught up in the cadence of his voice, and they end up really close. Whenever they realize their mistake, they can see Blaise staring at them, apparently still keeping their secret. Draco says that he scared Blaise into keeping things quiet, but Hermione still has her doubts.

He's in the middle of explaining how Michelangelo actually painted standing up, not on his back like most people assume, when suddenly there's shouting and the sound of tinkling glass shattering.

Hermione snaps her head around and sees Ginny, wobbling a little on her feet as she yells something at Dean--something about sex, and virginity, and a name, like Sarah or Sharon or something. Dean's face is wet and dripping, and Hermione quickly realizes that Ginny must have thrown her spiked punch into his face before shattering the glass onto the ground.

Draco and Hermione automatically swoop in, part of their duty to as head boy and girl to make sure things like this don't happen. Draco sets a hand on her shoulder, and Ginny whirls on him immediately.

"Don't," she flings at him, viciously. "Don't. I haven't forgotten what you are like, not like Hermione has!."

He recoils as if she slapped him, and takes a few backward steps as Hermione angrily hones in, maneuvers Ginny away and out of the room, pissed that Ginny had the nerve to bring up the fact that Hermione and Draco had been getting along. Dean's busying himself with mopping off his face with a napkin, and Harry is nowhere to be found--actually, Hermione looks around and realizes that Ron is MIA, too, the both of them are probably holed up upstairs, depressed they couldn't find dates, or making out, or both, at the rate things are going these days.

Draco disappears out one of the doors. Hermione presses past a group of Slytherin girls, who are trading scandalized whispers full of barely-contained glee at the dramatic scene unfolding before them, probably already planning out the wording of the gossip to swap over late brunches the next morning with the ones who were unlucky enough to not witness the drama firsthand.

She follows him, finds him outside. He's standing on the Quidditch pitch. He kicks the dirt, twice, and glares at the ground, angrily. Normally she'd be all, what the fuck, oh my god, chill out, get a grip, Malfoy-- but then he just stands there, shaking, lost. Something about that, tugs at her.

Hermione walks up to him from behind, presses the full length of her body against his back and clasps her arms tightly around his waist. Her face is buried in the folds of his shirt, against the knob of his spine. He smells good, like a boy.

She stays like that until she feels the tension slowly leave his body.

"What, no 'Get a grip, Malfoy?" he finally says, but he doesn't sound pissed. "I **can't **have people finding out about us."

"Get a grip, Malfoy," she mumbles against his shirt. "Does that help?"

"If I say yes, can we go shag?"

* * *

Three days later, Draco's mom gets sent off to rehab, after Lucius forces her into it. Hermione thinks it's funny that Narcissa drinks one to many vodkas in her house and they ship her away in the blink of an eye--but no matter how publicly and dramatically Ginny falls apart, no one ever thinks to do anything on her behalf.

Actually, that's not funny, it's just sad, is what it is. Hermione pities Ginny, because her whole family is in denial and Ron and Harry don't care about her enough to intervene, but she refuses to feel guilty--it's not her responsibility to stop the train wreck that is Ginny.

Draco and her skip lunch. He looks worn down, and tired, and he tells her that this whole deal with shipping his mother off, it was really emotional, that there was a lot of crying involved. She wonders if that means that Draco cried, too, but it's not like she's going to ask.

"I'm supposed to visit, in a few weeks. And my father isn't going to be there," Draco says slowly, and looks straight at her. "Would you maybe--?"

It takes her a few seconds to understand what he's hinting at, and how what she thinks he's saying could possibly work and then she gets it.

"Sure," she agrees, looking into the grass. "Yeah, sure. I'll go."

* * *

**Author's Note: We would've posted this sooner, but we were stuck writing at Barnes and Noble for hours with a near dead cell phone, starving to death, and nearly falling over from lack of sleep. Then we went out to dinner and after I got home I (the one supposed to post this chapter) fell asleep fully clothed.**

**We were up till two a.m. writing "Blood Washes Blood" our new fic, so again sorry for the delay : ( But, remember, it is hard work to post _everyday _so we appreciate feedback, without it, we'd probably stop writing this altogether. For those of you who did review –hugs- _you rock_.**

**Love,**  
_**The Re-Writers**_


	9. Chapter 8: Holiday From Real

**Blackout**

Chapter 8

_**Holiday From Real**_

* * *

Rehab seems a lot like a luxury resort to Hermione. There are gourmet chefs, and a gigantic outdoor pool with a waterfall, and the rooms are huge (with vaulted ceilings, she points out to Draco, and is impressed with herself for remembering)--the bedsheets are 500 thread count, at least. But she figures maybe it's only like this because Draco's father, Lucius, is footing the bill; for ordinary people it would never be this nice.

Lucius was the first one to visit his wife, but apparently left angry. Draco tells her that Lucius has to "work" and Hermione is far too afraid to ask what his work entails--trying to kill her friends? Draco says that no one else knows about Narcissa's rehab stint, it would ruin the family reputation, so it's just Draco and Hermione visiting that morning.

Before they go (skipping classes, mind you), Hermione goes to her room and changes her outfit five times; Draco sits on her bed, flicking through one of her old issues of Witch Weekly while really watching her undress and redress, and each time she comes out in a new one, he tells her she looks fine. But he's a boy, so what does he know? How do you dress for a visit to rehab to make yourself look like you are a pure blood? If she takes her cues from Pansy, dressing like a pureblood means dressing like a gothic skank.

Eventually she settles on what to wear, but then Draco wants to have sex when he sees her in it, so she ends up having to change her outfit again afterward. So really, it's completely his fault that they're running late.

In her short black dress and Draco's dark suit they look more fit for a funeral than anything else, but Hermione still feels like an imposter. Is it an insult to the enire Muggle-born population to do this?

Narcissa hugs her, briefly; she smells like laundry soap, and when she pulls back Hermione can see that though her hair is neatly arranged, her face is freshly scrubbed and she isn't wearing any makeup at all. She looks older, and tired, but not unhappy--though if she knew what Hermione really was, she was willing to bet that Narcissa would be pretty _damn _unhappy.

"Are you Draco's new girlfriend," Naricissa asks.

Hermione glances at Draco, who looks away, before saying, "No. Just a...friend."

Narcissa raises her eyebrows, gives her the once-over, and Herminone is so sure that something gave her away. Is it her hair, her outfit, what? How could she possibly know? She's almost positive they have never met before.

Hermione sticks around for a couple of minutes, long enough to hear Draco verify to his mother that Hermione is indeed a pureblood, _of course she is_, and that she is of the house of Ravenclaw, and _yes_,_ of course_, he is still dating Pansy. She waits outside to give them time to talk, feeling disgusted with herself. When she comes back in so they can leave, Narcissa gathers Draco all up in her arms. She rests her chin on the top of his head and then kisses his hair, whispers something Hermione doesn't quite catch--probably "Don't let me see you with that mudblood again", because during the whole drive home, Draco looks sulkier and more intense than she has ever seen him before.

* * *

They take a train back and stop in Hogsmeade, figuring both of them suddenly reappearing at the same time would raise a few eyebrows. Hermione carries her heels in one hand as they head down the boardwalk to an empty spot. She winces a little when she sits down--she's wearing a black minidress, one of her favorites, and after this it'll probably be ruined. It would be dumb to complain about that, when Draco is really upset, over real important matters, and she knows she is tough, she can suck it up and sacrifice a dress in the name of being a friend. But when did she ever care about Draco thinking she was dumb? She knows she is smarter than him, for Merlin's sake.

"My dress is completely ruined," she complains.

He shrugs. "Yeah."

That's Malfoy, always unsympathetic and wrapped up in his own little world. She waits until he extracts a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, and holds out her hand. He lights one for himself and uses the tip to light hers. She takes a long pull from it, gazes out at the sea. Neither of them are speaking, and Hermione is so sure that he is going to break up with her, or end it, or whatever wording would be appropriate for what they have been doing.

It's a very intense moment, and Hermione's afraid he's going to be all, _We should talk_, or, _I can't do this anymore_, or worst of all, _I'm in love with you_--but then she thinks maybe that wouldn't be the worst, maybe she wouldn't hate it if he said that at all. Her chest feels tight when she looks at him.

Instead he kisses her, long and deep and greedy, and it's like the way Hermione used to imagine Draco would be--rough and unsympathetic. It is hot, but unnerving. He grasps her face with both hands, his fingers touching the back of her neck, his thumbs pressed up beside her earlobes. He turns his arm around her, pinning her to the wet grass, so their bodies meet at all points. This is not a tentative, goofy kiss; it's a pre-sex kiss. How does she recognize it? She just does.

Hermione simultaneously feels sick and aroused, and like something is wrong.

He just seems so sexual, so distant.

She manages to push him off, and he's breathing heavily, and looking at her like she's nothing more than a toy, and maybe that _is _what she is to him. But then why would he bring her to meet his mother? Though really she didn't meet his mother at all.

"We need to get back," Hermione says quietly, and feels like something in the universe has shifted, and that there's no way that it can go back.

* * *

_**Author's Note**_

**Okay, we hope you guys didn't totally hate that chapter, because things really are going to go down hill for a while for Draco and Hermione. That was a hard chapter to write, even though it was so short, so don't be too harsh on us.**

**Anyways, in other news, we saw Order of the Phoenix, on Tuesday at midnight! Here's to waiting around for a whole year before we see the most Draco-centric installment of all, Half-Blood Prince! **

**Please review.**

**Love, The Re-Writers.**


	10. Chapter 9: A Low Happening

**Blackout**

_Chapter Nine_

_**A Low Happening**_

* * *

Hermione sits down in her Potions class, not wanting to look back two rows down where she knows Draco is staring at her. He's not staring in a loving way, but the same way he had yesterday—a hungry, fierce, '_I want sex now'_ look. Were all guys _this_ focused on sex? She looks over at Harry, who sits a seat diagonal from hers; he doesn't seem overly hyped up on testosterone, yet she does remember the party with Ron, but she really doesn't want to get think about that.

After class, she can't catch up to Draco who leaves in a rush.

"Fuck," she says to one in particular, not that anyone is listening.

"I'm pretty sure he's in the Slytherin common room," Blaise says, catching her eye. "I can go get him."

Hermione stares at him, confused. Was he even talking to her? Given her link to Draco, it was a perfectly reasonable statement, and with his knowledge all the more so. But given that the link is supposed to be invisible, it just feels strange.

"Why would _she _go see Drake?" Pansy says, whining. Blaise looks between Hermione and Pansy, with a mixture of amusement and annoyance on his handsome face.

"Head stuff," Hermione says, feeling Pansy's dark eyes staring at her.

Pansy stares at Hermione, studying her from head to toe, "Lovely." Pansy's sarcasm does not faze Hermione, who only watches as Blaise fetches Draco for her. Pansy stands her ground and Hermione feels the jealously that seers through her.

Blaise returns, with Draco beside him.

"_Yes_?" He says, and it's antagonizing and sarcastic and exactly the way he used to sound around her, so she doesn't know why it feels so shocking.

"We need to talk," she starts, and realizes how awful that sounds, "about the next prefect meeting." She watches Draco carefully, memorizing the way he acts so put off, how he apologizes politely to Pansy, and follows her out of their sight.

"There is no prefect meeting," he says bluntly, and she is caught off guard. Now what excuse does she have to talk to him? They never made plans, there are no rules about having to remain in contact with someone you had sex with.

Hermione stares at him. What right does he have to talk to her like this? She feels so humiliated. Fine, go fuck with Parkinson then.

"Fine." Hermione says, his voice is irritating her and the way he's looking at her with that mean typical Malfoy stare that had always hurt her when they were younger. But, they weren't younger now, so he should not act this way. He should be like…

Draco waits for her to say something else, but then he walks off without even a good-bye.

Hermione feels herself begin to realize that Malfoy has no will power at all. If he needs sex, he needs it and if it is not coming from her, he'll get it somewhere else.

And suddenly she couldn't remember what made her get involved with him in the first place.

* * *

Hermione can feel her shame for what she did with Draco beginning to boil over, and then she's crying, and crying, and not caring who sees. As her bad luck would have it, she is forced to walk past where Blaise and Pansy are talking on the way to where she plans to hide in the library.

She sees Pansy snicker as she goes by, and Hermione wishes in a sick way that everybody knew about her and Draco. Now _that _would give Pansy something to laugh about.

The doors to the library are locked, and Hermione leans against the doors, letting her body slowly drop to the ground, her head in her hands.

"You okay," she hears, and if it's Draco everything will be okay.

It's not.

Blaise tells Hermione that this has happened before, but what difference does that make? Sure, she believes him that Draco has screwed other mudbloods and not given a damn, but didn't they mean anything at _all_? Her inexperience in relationships and casual sex is embarassing, and Blaise pitying her is so not helping.

"I can go hurt him for you, if you want," Blaise says, and Hermione says no because Draco is walking by them like he doesn't see them at all, so she already knows that Draco is hurt.

* * *

That night, Hermione sits in the common room, wondering what will happen next.

"We have to talk," Draco says, rushing in from outside.

"No we don't," Hermione retorts coldly.

"Don't be so fucking full of yourself. I mean head business. We need to start planning graduation. _Already_." He's smirking and if Hermione was a stranger she would see two people who severely dislike one another and are not even remotely attracted to each other. _ Just like last year_, it's a mantra and it keeps ringing in her head.

"I'm sorry this happened," she says, and means it too.

"I don't blame you," he says sarcastically, overaccentuating each word.

"No, but I mean--"

"I know what you mean."

As she looks up at him, she wishes she could say what she really feels, that she loves him. It's sick and wrong, but after they had sex the first time, and she had given that much away, she loved him. Did that make her a sick person?

Hermione hardly feels suprised when Draco cocks his head towards his room and says, "You want to go in there?"

The speeding of her pulse, and the mixture of both excitement and anxiety is too much. Very quiety, she says, "Sure."

They are only kissing for less than a minute when Draco pulls off her skirt and quickly tosses it aside along with her underwear. He pulls off his trousers and is left only in boxers. And suddenly they're off, and he's entering her, and Hermione feels the hot, sticky thrusting, and his hands against her back--this is what she has been missing, this is what she has been denied? Sex? That's all it is.

He cums, and then it's over, and his pants are pulled up but he has not yet buckled his belt.

Still laying down, he says, "Come here," and she feels skeptical and irritated, but lets him wrap his arms around her waist and kiss her and hug her tightly. Hermione's eyes fill with tears. There is nothing to do but to touch his hair with her fingers. When they would make out, he would always say how soft her hair was, but the truth, which she never told him, was that so was his.

* * *

_**Author's Note**_

**So yeah, things are still heading downhill for Hermione and Draco. We will most definitely keep posting quickly until Deathly Hallows comes out when we will have to pause with everything else in life to sacrifice a couple days of reading. But we're sure you guys will do the same. **

**Keep reviewing, you have no idea how motivating it is to have reviews.**

**Love,**

**The Re-Writers**

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